Become a Fan

August 15, 2014

Yes, I still plan to keep blogging daily, but we were in transit out to Colorado to visit Eileen's family the last two days, making it to just west of Lincoln last night and pulling into Loveland this afternoon.

I actually saw what I think was my first real haystack on the north side of I-80 in central Nebraska this morning. Hay is generally baled into 3-foot-or-so circular wheels but one farmer seemed to be putting them in big haystacks rather than those hay baler wheels.

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Since I was out of radio contact, we had the replacement for Bud Lite named, their labor lawyer Rob Manfred manns the position going forward; shall I go with a Do Wah Diddy or Mighty Quinn earwig? I'm not sure what the bodes for relations with the players, but league lawyers are often the default selection for commissioners these days. The NFL and NBA bosses (and their predecessors) were league lawyers before getting the top job, with Selig being the only guy coming out of another paradigm, being a team owner promoted by his peers to run the sport.

7'5" 360; that's a load Young Sim Bhullar might well be a bull underneath. Guys that size will always get a long look in the NBA.

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I'm still getting my mind around the Ferguson protests. You have a tragic shooting that we still don't have the details of, but folks there and their abetters in the black-activist universe are making this Rodney King and Trayvon Martin rolled into one; Trayvon's folk's lawyer is laying on the "executed in broad daylight" hyperbole thick while working with the victim's parents. The news of the day that the young man, sainted by his backers as a college-bound blameless kid, was a robbery suspect, muddies the waters a bit.

Trashing neighborhood stores and throwing bricks on to I-270 (I think I've been on that stretch a decade ago for my sister-in-laws wedding in nearby St. Charles) isn't going to help bring the dead teenager back, get better treatment for black youth or get jobs for black youth. Trashing your neighborhood will drive jobs away rather than bring them in other than some government make-work program that will be harder to transition into more long-standing work down the line.

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I'll finish on a light note; I saw the last couple of innings of this Little League WS game, where a young lady, Mo'ne Davis, pitched a two-hit shutout in leading her Philly team to an opening round win. Eight strikeouts and 70 pitches to dispatch 18 batters in the six-inning LL game; not bad for anyone, really not bad for a girl playing with the boys. Success as a 12 year old (or a 14 year old posing as one) doesn't always translate into making the majors, but it would be interesting if Mo'ne were putting mo'ne in the bank in 2022 or so as the first woman to make a major league roster (or a roster in any major men's sport).

November 21, 2013

One of the last words you want to see about an athlete is "consensual." That does open up the question of whether Winston tastes good like a quarterback should. One athlete too many has been in a he-said-she-said sexual episode that is best avoided in the first place.

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Some folks are checking for semen, others are checking for Prince. Fielder, that is, who's heading to the metroplex in a straight-up deal for Ian Kinsler... well, with a $30m chaser. Fielder might fare better in Texas, where comparisons to his dad Cecil and talk of the strained relations between the two will be less.

It also allows for an interesting set of musical chairs, with Kinsler filling second and Cabrera moving back to first, allowing prospect Nick Castellanos to slide back to third rather than continuing his crash course as an outfielder. Omar Infante is likely gone with the Kinsler signing, so we would likely see an infield of Castellanos, Iglasias, Kinsler and Cabrera from left to right; three newcomers since August and a new spot for Miggy.

Speaking of Omar, Omar Vizquel is heading to Detroit as first base coach and infield/running coach. I can't think of anyone better (outside of Ozzie Smith, possibly) to coach Jose Iglasias than one of the best glove men at short in baseball history. I recall watching him anchor the Indian infield in the mid 90s, doing the kind of highlight reel defense that we've started to see from Iglasias.

In a rapid-fire set of developments on Thursday, the Senate narrowly approved a rule change that would limit the ability of the minority party to block key presidential appointments. Instead of needing 60 votes to break a filibuster, Democrats will now need only 51.

It's not a banana republic or a bully, just majoritarian. It does take some of the Senate's traditions out of the mix, but the 60-vote cloture rule has been disliked by the majority party, with Republicans talking about such a move during the Dubya years. The minority will always take the cooling rhetoric of George Washington to heart but chafe at the same rules when their side runs the Senate.

This is a pro-action move, which will irk the "standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'" school of conservatism, but it will let a center-right coaltion work to pass things in the future.

November 06, 2013

Facebook can be draining at times. One of my former church 2YO Sunday School charges in Lexington is now 7 and has bone cancer. We're FB friends with his mom, and she's posting away a blow-by-blow of his progress as he starts chemo.

That's hard to read; the little squirrel deserves better than that.

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When the news of Toronto mayor Rob Ford's crack video came out, I thought that anyone smart enough to get elected mayor of that big a city wouldn't dumb enough be caught on tape toking away while talking profane trash about local politics; you have Marion Berry as a case to the contrary, but I wasn't buying that the dumb stick would strike twice in that way.

Well, yes it did. And like Berry, Ford is a political Rasputin, refusing to follow the script and resign. Can you get stupid-drunk and take pipe hits and still have the voters respect you? One would hope not, even if his replacement would be a step down on a policy level.

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Speaking of Ford, I once described him as Chris Christie with a third of the charm. The original got re-upped, giving liberals glee across the board. Not only did their favorite Republican this side of John McCain win, the more socially-conservative Ken Cuccinelli lost a tight race to former DNC head Terry McAuliffe in Virginia.

That sets up the meme of moderates win, theocons lose; but that's a simplistic take. Moderates win in blue states where a more-conservative candidate would be road kill in a general election. Conservatives can win in conservative-leaning states unless they are sailing upwind.

Cuccinelli was saddled with a scandal-laden outgoing GOP governor, a Central Casting black conservative preacher as the LG nominee, and a Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis drawing social moderate voters away, even as real libertarians like Ron Paul noted that Sarvis wasn't much of a libertarian even as he had the big-l Libertarian nomination.

Add a government lockout that made Tea Party folks look bad and a media that wanted to case the devout Catholic Cuccinelli as the second coming of Torquemada, and you had a near-perfect storm for McAuliffe. A liberal Washington insider would normally be easy pickings for a solid Republican candidate in VA, but even the Healthcare.gov fiasco didn't give enough anti-Democratic blowback to drag Cuccinelli over the line.

August 03, 2013

I noticed in the transactions section of the Midland paper that Corliss Williamson had signed on to be an assistant coach with the Kings. He was known to me as a good character guy in the Piston clubhouse, which ran somewhat counter to his Big Nasty nickname. A good guy to run heard over the emotional DeMarcus Cousins, right?

Williamson joins the organization after spending three years as the head coach of the University of Central Arkansas. Prior to his stint with the Bears, Williamson spent three seasons as both an assistant and later head coach of Arkansas Baptist College.

Not bad, especially working for a church school as a coach. I haven't seen where Cousins is on his portfolio directly, but I'd be surprised if he wasn't, as the one big man type on the coaching staff that I could recognize.

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Speaking of big man coaches, Hakeem Olajuwon had been becoming this generation's Pete Newell as the go-to guy for post play coaching, having any number of players from LeBron on down going to Houston during the off-season for some Dream weaving of their games.

[Amare] Stoudemire had planned to return to Texas to refine the post moves he
learned last summer. That Olajuwon is about to be named to the Rockets
staff as instructor for Dwight Howard and Omar Asik is not a factor in
Stoudemire not attending.

According to a Rockets source, Houston
is allowing Olajuwon to fulfill any of his prior commitments with
opposing players this month before he exclusively works with Rockets big
men. Hence, Stoudemire might never work with Olajuwon again.

He and a number of other big men from around the league.

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Cold War 2.0? Seeing Putin let Snowden have temporary assylum in Russia is not a great sign for US-Russian relations, but it does relieve the PR nightmare of having Snowden play Man Without a Country at the Moscow airport. This way, Putin looks somewhat decisive while encouraging Snowden to get out of Dodge in the long term.

One quick take here on Snowden; he's neither a whistle-blower or a traitor. The first is reserved for calling out clear wrong-doing (which the NSA was of iffy constitutionality but not clearly an evil act) and the second is somehow who supports a foe of the country (which Snowden didn't do; he merely opposed the NSA's omnivorous approach to intel gathering and told the public of it).

Interestingly, Wikileaks inside man Bradley Manning did not get convicted of treason, either. The stuff he made public might have helped some of the US' foes, but he seemed to be trying to be the "War on Terror" analogue of Daniel Ellsberg in leaking the Foggy Bottom cables. A military jury passed on convicting of aiding the enemy but did convict him of compromising security.

April 21, 2013

Revis and Buc-Head? I'm not sure if the was the first guy to get the "two thirds of the earth are covered by water and the other third is covered by [fill in CF/CB name]", but Darrelle Revis comes close; he just got traded to Tampa Bay, where he'll help a dysfunctional secondary. A sidebar on the ESPN piece noted that the Bucs were next to last in giving up 30+ plays outside the numbers, making their secondary the Tampa Poo.

They had Wacky-tobaccy Day yesterday. One gal pictured on Drudge either had lit up a Happier Hour burrito or had gotten into the prop room from Up in Smoke. If they folks were of a spiritual bent, they'd give high church a new meaning this morning.

The post-mortem of the Boston bombings begins; one interesting report had Tamerlan intereviewed by the FBI two years ago. It seems he had shown up on Russian intelligence radar and they asked the US to look into him. At the time, the federales didn't find anything to act upon.

I was just thinking of our pressure-cooker bomb. Buying a pressure cooker isn't going to show up on radar; we usually don't put Bed, Bath and Beyond on terror-watch mode. Buying a pound or two of nails at the hardware store to make the shrapnel won't raise any red flags, lest every building contractor get the white glove treatment. Only the explosive itself would create an issue, and in some cases (as OKC clearly would remind us) that you can make bombs out of "dual use" stuff with mundane applications.

Thus, folks like the Tsarnaev brothers wouldn't be caught doing anything wrong until they actually did something wrong. Remember, only donut shop owners like a police state.

April 18, 2013

On a heavier note, they are starting to use Midland High as refugee housing; Eileen has Friday off since she teaches there.

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I was reading USA Today at lunch and they are in full yellow-journalism mode on the background check bill, with a dishonor roll of the folks who voted against the bill.

I made the mistake of forgetting that a trick a leader of the yeas can do is to vote against the bill if you're going to come up a bit short, since a no-voter can ask to reconsider the bill later. Dirty Harry did just that, but it's a trick that folks in both parties do on a regular basis, so it's not as sneaky as it sounds.

In order to list Reid's no vote on the dishonor roll behind the FAIL red stamp, they gave him an asterisk, noting the procedural rationale for his vote. That way he can figure out who's ass to risk twisting down the line after mau-mauing the Sandy Hook shooting a while longer.

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The Ricin-letter guy was found, a Tupelo, MS native who portrayed the most famous resident of that town on the side and was seeming born disgruntled and was, well, multiple bubbles off plumb. His vibe reminded me a bit of Gabby Gifford's shooter, a guy who like conspiracy theories and distrusted authority across the board; in Mississippi, that attitude will make you look liberal since you have conservative powers-that-be.

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When you get one toxic letter, false alarms are the order of the day. Saginaw had a scare when Sen. Levin's field office there has a supicious package that proved benign. That's just a half-hour away from us, so that was a bit spooky.

April 04, 2013

"American Athletic" sounds like a competitor for Dicks and Dunhams; I can already see the sweatshirt, which always has XL up front even on someone in a lower weight class.

That's what the football half of the Big East will go by. On a related note, Tulsa is joining the new configuration, giving them a dirty dozen football teams by 2015 when Navy starts tossing the pigskin with AA.

Ooh... all of the stairwells on campus have twelve steps, it take it.

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Speaking of folks Anonymous, they are at it again, but are on the side of the angels, giving what passes for North Korea's Internet a hard time.

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Interesting; Minnesota goes from one guy with UK roots to another, hiring away Florida Atlantic's Richard Petino. Yep, son of Rick "Get a Room" of Louisville fame. The second-generation college coach will get to go up against a trio of second-generation ballers at Michigan every year; he could get some advanced notice of them if they go up against his dad in the finals.

Time flies. When I started the blog, Ralph Klein was a big-mouthed premier of Alberta, prone to say something that would not sit well in the salons of Toronto or Vancouver on a quarterly basis. Now, he's on his last legs heading to hospice care.

That can be read two ways. One way is to be able to counter-scheme the read-option and render it ineffective. The shotgun was introduced a half-century ago by the 49ers as a running set, which confounded the NFL until George Halas pulled out his old single-wing defense playbooks and stuffed SF when they played his Bears. Some hot DC might come up with a scheme to contain the spread.

Or, you hit the quarterback enough where they stop wanting to run the spread before they get turned into sandwich spread. I'm reminded of this snark about Tubthumping ("I get knocked down, but I get up again") on this worst-song list; "Please, let's all keep knocking them down. I don't care what they say, eventually they'll stay down for good."

It wasn't that long ago that the Steelers had a QB that could run the spread. Kordell Stewart used to drive folks crazy with a proto-Wildcat and Dennis Dixon saw some time as a third-stringer promoted to starter; however, Dixon is now understudying Michael Vick on the other side of PA. You're not running the spread with Big Ben, so you want to make the spread go away if your Tomlin.

February 23, 2013

I haven't been blogging much the past few months; Facebook seems to take the random blog post, since you can do quick-take posts there easier than via a blog with a post-to-Facebook button.

In addition, I've been fighting off underemployed depression. I've got time to blog but fight to have the energy to. In addition, I'm in something of a-pox-on-both-your-houses mode in politics, where folks fight over which cliff to drive off of.

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Pre-season box-scores are hard to track down, but MLB.com seems to have it covered. The Tigers got beat 10-3, but all of the runs were allowed by farm-hands. Sanchez pitched two shutout innings and closer-designate Rondon pitched a shutout inning, albeit with a walk, a hit and two strikeouts; the latter sounds like Papa Grande circa 2011 a bit too much, having an adventure before getting out without damage.

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Interesting piece on Ron Sider calling out the AARP for being unhelpful in the bigger-picture budget debate; some trimming of wealther-seniors' benefits might well be called for as part of a long-term budget solution, but special-interest groups don't get funds for supporting only slightly messing with their demographic. Your pro-choicers will lobby to kill 'em off at 8.999 months and the AARP will go to the mat to protect Bill Gates' Social Security check.

Sadly, it's a AmSpec piece in the "liberal who gets the big picture" mode. Sider's actually been looking after "the least of these" since Hector was a pup and he can see that the Sun City crowd is generally not part of them. I recall selling his books two decades ago when I ran the Cedar Campus bookstore; he's one of the guys who didn't check his theology at the door when he takes a liberal economic take.

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There has to be a pony somewhere in that massive road apple the Pistons dropped in Indy last night; Khris Middleton looking like an NBA three and Kravtzov getting a double-double and occasionally playing a gawky Drummond to a Bynum lob. Since the Pistons traded their two main small fowards, Middleton might get some playing time going forward.

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Very odd Johnny Football story; he can't make money off his nickname, but he can sue people who are and pocket the results of the suit with the NCAA's blessing. That might give him some pocket money until he starts playing on Sunday a year or two from now.

December 08, 2012

A newly-popular rapper has some less-than-helpful comments about the US in his past. That shouldn't be that much of a surprise, since everyone from the Dixie Chicks on down were dissing the superpower side of the US in the mid-00s. Rappers are generally critters of the left, and when you throw in the semi-colonial relationship that the US has with South Korea, thus making the US an easy authority figure to rage against for Korean lefties, one could see where the path of least resistance for our young Psycho would be to dis Uncle Sam.

You expected him to do Lee Greenwood? It still doesn't make it right, but it at least makes it explainable. To top it off, Psy is back-peddling so well, the Lions might want to sign him to the practice squad.

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We've got some modest right-to-work legislation pending in Lansing. It doesn't go as far as the Wisconsin reforms that stripped public-sector workers from the right to bargain on wages; this just gives folks the right not to belong to a union and still work at a union-represented workplace. So, if Eileen gets hired in as a full-time paraeducator and is part of a workforce that is AFT-represented, she could opt not to pay dues and not be a part of the union.

That does create some free-riders who get the benefits of the strength-in-numbers effect of a union, but it also keeps unions from having a captive audience that has to make de-facto donations to the Democratic Party as part of their job; they can ask for the part of their dues that is political in nature back as part of current law, but there is a lot of comingling of union and political activity that would still be not refundable.

This would end the closed-shop, where you have to be a union member to work at a unionized facility. That hits the unions in their pocketbook, but is only un-democratic if you think that a majority should get to be able to browbeat a minority into going along and make them give money to questionable causes if a majority at work think its a good idea.

If done sloppily, you can have an under-trained responce team for fires which could cost lives; if done well, you can have your combo-responders doing police functions until extra firemen are needed, rather than playing fetch with the Dalmatian mascot between runs.

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California's Prop 8 is heading to the Supreme Court, along with a companion case which questions DOMA and asks for a same-sex couple to be treated as such by the IRS, who has to treat them as single per DOMA. The latter creates some interesting headaches, where state law can treated them as married but the IRS needs to treat them as single; it creates a mess during tax time for such folks.

The Prop 8 case has some interesting implications for things outside of same-sex marriage; the district judge questioned the use of tradition as a valid reason for banning same-sex marriage, calling religious arguments irrational. If that part of the case is upheld, it creates an open season for a whole host of other laws that have some traditional roots.

November 29, 2012

More Southern Poverty Law Center mission creep; suing churches for trying to straighten out gay folks. I'm not sure what this has to do for protecting the little guy; once could see where their core mission of hate-group containment fit their title, since it was poor blacks that the Klan and Nazi types preyed upon, but gays aren't an impoverished group. A put-upon group at times, but not poor.

However, things have morphed where the SPLC is anti-conservative rather than for the little guy. It takes away from the honorable work it's done keeping tabs on hard-core haters and hitting them in the pocketbook via well-placed lawsuits; now, they're seemingly looking for the pocketbooks first and expanding the mission to fit.

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I've passed on commenting on the 2.5 Men story, but this American Spectator piece opts to take both barrels to... Seventh Day Adventism, pulling out the greatest hits from the anti-cult literature on them; that's something of an own-goal to tackle the lesser evil first. The former half-man Angus Jones seems to have had a conversion through a SoCal SDA church; while it's theology leaves a bit to be desired (swapping annihilation for hell and some odd dietary rules alongside the Saturday-sabbath quirk), it's a better place to spend the weekend than the local bar.

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Computer software is getting scary at times. The other day, someone Googled here under "FSM Save the Queen"; Google figured out on its own to translate the acronym to Flying Spaghetti Monster and found an old post of mine.

On a comparable vein, Typepad now has a link-generator that provides possible links for you based on your post. For instance, as I type this part, it gives me a Wikipedia link for FSM, which I just used above. What's creepier is that it's offering a Hulu link to 2.5 Men, translating the decimal appropriately; that's one Siri-ous algorithm. Thanks, but I'll pass, since I kinda agree with Jones' rant of the week.

November 10, 2012

Gen. Petraeus seemed to be about the last guy to get caught with his pants down, but he would up having an affair and stepping down from his CIA post because of it. He seemed to be one of the good guys, having written the book on counter-insurgency warfare and becoming the top general on the ground in Southern Asia before getting the CIA job. He was mentioned as a possible running mate for Romney, as many respected generals are.

No, I don't think this is designed to head off him talking to Congress about the Benghazi case; there wouldn't be anything to stop the committees from asking a newly-former CIA chief to talk about stuff other than the standard security issues that might require part of his testimony to be done privately to keep secret stuff secret.

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The Air Force provided a great backdrop for Michigan State's basketball opener, as they turned a C-130 hanger into a fieldhouse in a couple of days at the big Ramstein base in Germany. Alas, UConn won, giving interim head coach Kevin Ollie a win in his first win since taking over from Jim Calhoun. However, MSU loves to play a tough out-conference schedule, since you'll learn more by losing to UConn than by mopping the floor with Slippery Rock, as Michigan did last night.

Speaking of openers; Kentucky has reloaded. This might well be a better club that last year, and they won the title last year.

That's a natural progression, since the provincial PCs are more centrist, having pruned the more libertarian/social conservative wing off via Wildrose; the current provincial Tories look more like the RINOey federal Tories of the 90s before merging back with the Reform/Alliance movement, more Joe Clark than Stockwell Day or Stephen Harper.

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I'm showing my age, but the news of Justin Welby as the new Archbishop Of Canterbury had me thinking of Marcus Welby, the old TD doctor. Welby is a moderate evangelical within the Anglican camp, somewhat more in line with the southern old-school churches than the British and North American churches who have listed left by and large. He's not an economic conservative, having chewed out lenders in a speech at the House of Lords, but he does have a business background, having worked for an oil company before entering the ministry.

What that means for pan-Anglican affairs remains to be seen. Welby seems to be pro-women-in-ministry but old-school on homosexual issues; thus, he's on the liberal side of one hot-button issue and on the conservative side of the other. The classic mugwump, with his mug on one side and his wump on the other.

November 03, 2012

Odd era, where I have my laptop in the computer shop (the plug-in spot broke off) and am using an older-but-underperforming laptop. The idea that we have a spare laptop in the house says something about where the computer has gone.

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My mom needs to get into the computer age; she get ticked a bit when we tell her what my sister and niece are doing via their Facebook posts, but Mom's not one to use computers... yet. We may just need to get her a laptop or tablet for Christmas.

I'm reminded of when we got Grandma Kraenzlein a microwave; she didn't see the need for one until we pulled an intervention and bought her one. We made need to do that with my mom, dragging her kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

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I've got a heavy heart for what I'm seeing out of the Sandy aftermath. Having ten million folks in one concentrated area requires a lot of infrastruture to get food, electricity, gas and all the others stuff of modern life into that area; that system broke down badly this week.

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The one guy who seems to have looked bad so far is Bloomberg and his tone-deaf attempt to get the NYC marathon running tomorrow despite areas near the course needing help. After an outcry, he did a 180 and cancelled the race. There is something to be said for sports being a way to getting back to normal, but not when it gets in the way of taking care of needs.

There's not much folks from outside the area can do to help, it seems. I don't own a gasoline delivery truck nor do I have electrical repair expertise or have a truck full of food that might help. Prayer is about all I can do.

October 02, 2012

The first presidential debate is tomorrow. It might be the first time some swing voters took a good look at Romney. The Republican-leaning crowd had a regular dose of him during the copious number of debates during the primary, but we've been in a lull since then.

If Romney can come up with a good back-track on the 47% line, it might well carry the day. Also, he'll need to get at least one dig on the "You didn't build that" front.

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Boko Haram seems to have lived up to its name on this one, shooting up a Nigerian college; You can't get much more "western education" sounding than Federal Polytechnic for "Western ed's not kosher" to attack. However, they aren't quite ready to chalk it up to BH; there are some gang-related activities that could possibly explain it, but there were BH backers on campus.

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Good times for a Tigers fan; they clinched the AL Central last night and saw Cabrera move into sole posession of first place in all three Triple Crown stats. The bias writers have towards winners might give Cabrera a nod over Mike Trout, given that the Angels came up short out west, albeit with a record two games better than Detroit.

9/11 +11. Somehow, I have a feeling things are about to get worse before they get better. Somalia is a free zone for radicals and northern Mali has become jihadist territory. Pakistan continues to be dysfunctional and unfriendly to civilization. The hangover from the Arab Spring winds out as new democracies in Libya and Egypt work out the kinks and a civil war in Syria could easily destabilize Lebanon and possibly through Turkey for a loop.

That being said, how fast is too fast? Would the Louisville Slugger folks be on the hook for the next killer line drive from a wood bat? Is a sports supplies store on the hook when the definition of safety shifts without a clear ruling? This one is sure to get appealed; it could spell the end of youth baseball if this became precident for baseball law.

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How hairy is Harry? He does have a wild side; I recall him getting caught smoking ganja, which prompted a slew of Harry Pothead or Harry Potted jokes.

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Anarchy in the US? Tampa would be vunerable to protest, since they could easily cut off St. Pete by blockading a few bridges.

August 15, 2012

Artur Davis stumping for Romney is almost a non-story if you've been following his migration from black Blue Dog congressman to Republican beltway lawyer over the last few years. However, Davis did second Obama's nomiation four years ago, so there's a bit of news there. Interestingly, he stumping in his new home turf of Virgina rather than Alabama; Romney doesn't need the help down there and VA is a swing state.

Davis might help more with white Blue Dog voters in VA than blacks; the latter is a tough demographic to crack while the former is increasingly in play as blue-collar voters see less and less of a rationale to vote Democratic if they work in the private sector.

Sad meltdown for Ocho Cinco. He gets arrested for head-butting his new wife, gets fired by the Fins and gets divorce papers filed... oh, and the reality show that was to follow the happy couple got cancelled. The guy needs prayer and therapy more than he needs a new contract, although he should have some miles left in the odometer once he gets his emotions under check; despite all the NFL fines and histrionics, this is his first run-in with the law.

August 03, 2012

It looks like the Tigers have called up Andy Dirks and let Don Kelly go; Kelly has been "designated for assignment" so they have 20 days to either waive him, trade him or get his OK to go to the minors. His outfield-3B package can be duplicated by fast-rising Nick Castellanos, and Castellanos is a right-hander. With three corner-outfielders coming from the left (Berry, Dirks and Boesch) and Cabrera entrenched at 3B and doing a decent job, there isn't much of a spot for him anymore.

In the off-season, they'll likely need to move one of those three lefties, unless they opt to DH Boesch and then use Castellanos as a utility guy to give everyone a breather, especially against lefties.

The assembly adopted the Saudi-sponsored resolution 133-12 with 31 abstentions. It came a day after Kofi Annan announced his resignation as the U.N. and Arab League special envoy to Syria.

As they'd say down south, Kofi, bless his heart. The UN lifer gave it a go, but you can only help the little old lady across the street if she wants to go; frog marching her across isn't in Annan's DNA.

Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Syria were among those voting against the resolution. Algeria, India and Pakistan were among those abstaining. Of Syria's neighbors, Lebanon abstained, and Iraq, Jordan and Turkey voted for the resolution.

That would give the US and its friends some backup were they to do something; it would run counter to Obama's multilateralist mindset, but he's been known to go against form from time to time, like with the Rolling Drones and taking out Osama.

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Speaking of Osama, I saw an interesting T-shirt at lunch-"The Bin Laden Cocktail-Two shots and a splash."

Mr Doyle, former adviser to the IMF's European Department, which is running the bailout programs for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, said the Fund's delay in warning about the urgency of the global financial crisis was a failure of the "first order".

Big entities tend to run slowly, and the IMF is no exception. Since it's an international consortium that no one country controls, they are functionally independent, so they can take their sweet time to do things; however, doing things slowly is often not a bad thing, since you're rather them screw things up in small doses rather than hose a country with austerity up the five hole.

Interestingly, the Doyle name brought back memories of David Doyle, Charlie's Angels' supervisor. While I was a-Doyleing, I spotted Jerry Doyle, who was the security chief on Babylon 5 and is now a Paulista talk show host. I like this quip about his role as Garibaldi, a "Mick from Brooklyn playing a Wop from Mars."

July 12, 2012

Interesting piece on the future of Mexico's PAN. Things don't seem that bad on the ground, since the winning PRI presidential candidate is from the pro-market neoliberal wing of the party and a PAN-PRI coalition with PAN as the junior partner might be easier to get things done than with the PRI in opposition.

After 12 years, swing voters wanted to give some one else a shot; thankfully (on economics, at least), it seems that Mexico got Bill Clinton rather than Barack Obama when they replaced their conservatives, incoming presidente Pena is more like Slick Willie both on economics and on sexual proclivities.

One interesting aspect is that Parker might be one-and-done-for-now if he follows the Mormon pattern of spending two years on mission at 19. He'd likely be leaving $20M on the table if he spends those two years before being drink-legal (clown metaphor, bro) doing something other than terrorizing NBA defenders.

Both BYU and Kentucky (another one on his list) are used to losing freshman, but BYU normally expects to get theirs back.

Interesting piece on setting the timing for Ramadan. Thing are moving towards an astronomical definition that can allow it to be firmly placed in advance, but since there is no one Islamic authority, things vary from place to place; we have an Orthodox-Western split on the liturgical calendar, but this makes Christians look like a focus of unity.

Keep that in mind in conversations about Sharia; there isn't one take on how to be Muslim, as this Ramadan-timing story shows, so we shouldn't assume a Taliban version when the S-word is bandied about.

June 30, 2012

He told the Tahrir crowd he would work to secure freedom for Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric jailed for life over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

"I will do everything in my power to secure freedom for detainees... including Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman," Mursi said in his address to the throng packing the hub of the 2011 revolution.

That will not sit well on this side of the Atlantic.

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Lamar Odom gets to head back to Tinseltown, as the Clippers picked him up from Dallas in a four-way deal. What Odom could use is to borrow from Dallas the TV show, and wake up to find that the last year was all a bad dream. Running fast breaks with Blake Griffith on the other wing would work nicely if he can get the bad taste and inactivity of last year out of the way.

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One posited legal solution to nixing "Obamacare" is to dwell on the fact that the Senate essentially wrote the law when the House is required to start money bills in the Constitution; Samidzata has an example of the meme here.

Minor problem-lots of laws nominally start in the House, but then the Senate deletes almost all the House's origional and put in their version as an "amendment." If the House agrees to the changes, it goes to the President; if not, we get a conference committee to hash out the differences, which then gets voted on by the House, then the Senate.

In the case at hand, the House approved the Senate version without a conference committee; by the time the House had voted, Scott Brown had gotten into the Senate and took away the 60th vote to get any new revisions past, so they passed the Senate version as-is to avoid having a second vote in the Senate. It was a nasty fight, since pro-life provisions in the starter-version had been trimmed in the Senate and pro-life Democrats like Bart Stupak had to be strong-armed into going along.

Nuking Obamacare on those grounds would throw a truckload of laws (likely most) that were amended wholesale in the Senate; that would create a mess that neither Roberts or Kennedy is likely to sign off on. Even Thomas and Scalia might pass on going that far.

June 29, 2012

Reality sets in for Republicans after last night's contempt-of-Congress vote on AG Holder; who gets to do the proscecuting? The Justice Department, headed by a guy named Holder. They'll work like good BBQ, low and slow rather than fast and furious.

The interesting question is whether a Romney-era Justice department can bring charges on the former boss if we get to that point. Is there a statute of limitations on a contempt charge so that if Obama does win, a future administration might bring it up in 2017 or later?

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On a lighter note, the draft was interesting. Kentucky tied its own record by having six players drafted, including the top two for the first time ever. Detroit's pick of Andre Drummond was a good one, an 18-year-old shot-blocker who looks like a poor-man's Anthony Davis, or a taller Ben Wallace. If Big Ben can be persuaded to stick around, either as a player or assistant coach, he could even help his free-throw shooting, which was at 29% at UConn last year. That can't be said of too many players.

Little Ben, Ben Gordon, got shipped off to Charlotte for Cory Maggette; the Bobcats get a future #1 as well for eating Gordon's bloated (at least a on bang-for-buck basis) contract. Maggette might work well as a off-the-bench swingman, getting starter minutes in a four-man 123 rotation with Knight, Stuckey and Prince.

US envoy to Kenya Scott Gration has announced his resignation, citing "differences in leadership style and priorities" with Washington.

That is what we call diplomatic. There is a far bigger story there, if Gration or one of his aids is willing to talk. Since Keyna borders Somalia, it is a key location geopolitically, and a former Air Force general might have wanted something different from what his bosses wanted.

June 23, 2012

60 years. That's what Jerry Sandusky will get at minimum for his pedophilia. The sad part of the story is that guys who honestly want to help boys will get tarred with that brush as people avoid having repeats of this, since Sandusky often found targets through his youth charity.

On the good side, the case is behind us coming up to the start of football season this fall, letting PSU try to start anew. A detente with the Paterno clan might be nice, even though it's too late for JoePa himself.

By the way, congratulations to Miami on their NBA title, getting that monkey off LeBron's back. I'm not one of the haters, but was rooting for OKC, since Miami had cast itself as the NBA's Yankees. That being said, you can still appreciate Jeter and A-Rod and root against the Pinstripes, and you can appreciate the triple-double-machine the same way.

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Here's an interesting story I stumbled into as we came back from TN this week; the Free Hills settlement in northern TN, where freed slaves from the Hill plantation settled and created a rare free-black community in the pre-Civil War south. I just noted the road sign as we were going past and checked out the story once we got back.

The natives are getting restless; Lloyd McClendon's head on the chopping block might be a possible knee-jerk but positive move, with bringing Leon Durham up from Toledo to take over as hitting coach. There are too many Leyland folks on the coaching staff to fire the big guy mid-season, but Durham seems to be getting stuff out of the folks in Toledo.

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Walker's up 54-45 with 88% in. Unless the unions empty out the Chicago graveyards and got the zombies to do same-day registration in Madison, that should hold up. As the old Hewittism goes, if it ain't close, they can't cheat. I would still like to see the focus group of the folks who are Walker-Obama voters, since Obama leads in the polls.

The answer is, if I can borrow from the old US Grant line, to find out what Walker's been drinking and send a case of it to Mitt Romney; let's hope it's non-alcoholic.

What's with Slick Willie? Going rogue and plugging for a full extension of tax cuts, including the upper brackets. He's triangulating, but he's not the one on the ballot. This will be interesting to watch, to see if he continues to distance himself from his wife's boss.

June 01, 2012

St Pete's gets to announce a new arrival, but he has to do it like the Notre Dame PA guy-"Or-land-oh-WOOOOOOOOOOOL-ridge." Dying of heart trouble at 52; time flies, it doesn't seem like it was three decades ago he and Bill Laimbeer were taking the Irish deep into the top 20 with Digger Phelps at the helm.

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Some white-hat hackers are on the job, following up the Stuxnet worm that messed with Iranian nuke processors with a Flame malware that does a lot of spying on its host. At least it seems white-hat from here, since Iranian computers are the most affected; thus, fingers are pointing at the US and Israel as possible writers. One can only hope the Iranians or other enemies of the US (like the Anonymous folks who trash US policy) are doing the same thing back at us, since the really good hacks go undetected.

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This is a bit old, but this story on Google buying Motorola's phone business seems troubling. What's odd is that it was the Chinese government giving the last crutial blessing with the proviso that the Android system stay available to other phone makers rather than become a propriatry Motorola thing.

Vertical intergration need not be bad for the market, but when Google's energy will be focused somewhat onto the Motorola brand, it weakens the rest of the market, letting Microsoft have an easier time of dominating the remainder of the non-Apple universe.

May 30, 2012

An odd news day. Here's one from Ottawa, where someone sent Tory HQ a foot. It sounds like a plotline tailor-made for Bones, who has a recurring character of a Canadian forensic pediatrist. This is one the specialist could sink his teeth into.

It was retired educator Grady Yarbrough of San Antonio, described by the AP as “a perennial candidate who has run as a Democrat and a Republican in previous elections.”

Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson chalked it up to the place that the late former U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough still holds in Democrats’ very fiber although his time in the Senate was decades ago and his name is spelled slightly differently.

That's what came to mind when I saw his name; the late senator was a liberal Democrat who happened to have held the seat up this year until Lloyd Benson primaried him in 1970. As a non-Texas, it just hit a distant cord as "wasn't there a senator by that name?" but quite a few folks seem to have taken the bait.

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The bigger story was that LG Dewhurst got held under 50%, forcing a runoff with conservative favorite Ted Cruz on the GOP side. Cruz has his work cut out for him, making up a 46-32 gap without being able to self-fund and with the Rick Perry machine out for his LG. However, runoffs will tend to lean conservative, so Cruz has a shot.

May 26, 2012

The essay dealt with MA kids whose tweets racially dissed a black Washington player after he knocked Boston out of the NHL playoffs; their school is disciplining them for their extracurricular behavior, which the essayist noted is of dubious First Amendment legality.

Lots of things are legal and even constitutionally protected, but not OK.

Are we seeing a 'Mexican Spring'? No, you're just seeing the Mexican left using social media. The Mexican Spring came a decade ago when the PRI allowed itself to lose to the right-of-center PAN; now, the PAN has spent a decade-plus in charge and has lost its freshness and the race for president is between the establishment-left PRI and the hard-left PRD (Canadian Liberal versus NDP might be a fair comparison if you had Howard Dean off his meds heading up the NDP; letting Canada annex Vermont is always worth dreaming of).

Last go-round, the PRD candidate, Andres Lopez Obrador lost a squeaker to the PAN candidate and protested like crazy even after a recount confirmed a Calderon win. Lopez Obrador is heading up the PRD ticket again, and has Mexico's noventa y neuve por ciento hot and bothered like a 2008 version of Obama; since Lopez Obrador's party has never won the Mexican presidency, he looks like the pristine outsider.

Yeah, you have leftist youth using social media. Youth use social media unless they are totally dirt poor these days. However, Mexico in 2012 isn't a unreformed dictatorship in need of a peaceful revolution; Mexico 2018 might be if Lopez Obrador gets in.

May 15, 2012

The NewsCorp phone-hacking scandal seems to have Our Ms. Brooks as its poster girl. You always see that red Kenny G mane of hair whenever Murdock's minions are on the hot seat.

Everyone outside of the Murdock empire seems to have a special level of glee at their troubles. So far, it doesn't seem to have made it over to the Fox side of things, as it is mostly the British papers in the chain, including the now-defunct News of the World, that were up to their eyeballs in naughty actions.

That's one rich boy in the hoodie. I'm not sure what percentage Zuckerberg has in Facebook, but the whole thing is looking at a $100B market cap. When you're delivering the goods at that level, you can wear your PJs to a meet-and-greet on Wall Street. If you're a small-capper, you might need to dress up, but Zuckerberg is a 800 pound gorilla who dresses like he wants; you're going to tell him to put the tie back on?

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Interesting moves in BC, where the Liberals are the main party of the right in provincial politics. However, the Conservatives are gaining ground on the provincial Grits to a point where merger talks are being discussed. With Wildrose doing well, but not well enough, in Alberta next door, seeing BC go the other route and have a grand coalition of the center-right seems unlikely; there's just too much political ground to see a coalition that can cover 60%+ of the vote, especially when the current government is a bit squishy and on its heels.

A three-way Liberal-Conservative-NDP fight on the provincial level not unlike the voting on a federal level, might be what the next election sees.

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I gave up on the Tigers this afternoon when they fell behind 6-0 while I went to get Eileen from work; my mistake. The Tigers put up an 8-spot in the 6ths and hung on to a 10-8 win; even weak-hitting Ryan Rayburn got into the act, tripling his RBI total for the year with a homer and 4RBIs. Maybe Rayburn actually has game and didn't have a picture of Jim Leyland in flagrante delicto with a Pekinese.

May 14, 2012

Here's an interesting piece on Heathrow Airport's future; the premise is that a two-runway airport isn't going to be sustainable as a hub and that they need to expand. I don't know the logistics there, but many airports have sufficient NIMBY issues where expansion is problematic, especially when the city grows up around the airport.

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One interesting aspect of reading the Telegraph piece was that I had banner ads plugging a local Michigan college. Read globally, get ads locally.

Or at least localized. Some of the cheesy ads are in [insert city here] format. The ad that was running for the Lexington mom earning beaucoup bucks only looks like a dead ringer for the Midland mom doing the same thing.

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One interesting way around visa rules; have the office space in international waters. Thus, workers can get a visitor visa and commute out to the office ship moored 12 miles off SanFran. They're not working in the US, just living there, and a tourist visa is easier to get than a green card or H1 tech-worker visa.

Getting broadband out to the ship is the big trick; a long extention cord might be an option in the form of an underwater cable out to the ship's locale.

May 07, 2012

The grim trade is being run from China where corrupt medical staff are said to be tipping off medical companies when babies are aborted or delivered still-born.

The tiny corpses are then bought, stored in household refrigerators in homes of those involved in the trade before they are removed and taken to clinics where they are placed in medical drying microwaves.

...

There is a huge demand for alternative Chinese remedies - which include ground up rhino horns.

Better keep Richard Lugar well away from the Far East, then, if they're using RINOs in that way. No, that is not their highest and best use.

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Lugar is getting primaried and is using most every trick in the moderate's book, including making the challenger look like a wingnut, reaching across to the other party for extra votes and making himself out to be the only reasonable choice. State treasurer Richard Mourdock looks to have him beat, and the closer he gets to losing, the more Lugar looks like Bill Milliken, getting bitterer by the year as he aged into RINO dependency.

Lugar had a decent dose of class over the years, but seems to have lost it along with any political future. Indiana law precludes a third-party or independent run for folks who lost a primary, so a Murkowski/Lieberman route won't hunt in the Hoosier State.

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France is in for a hard adjustment if incoming president Hollande really wants to declare war on finance. What do you replace it with? A slow grind into state-run autarky and equal-but-poor living somewhere north of Cuban wage levels? We've yet to see a democratic socialist state that lived up to both ends of the bargain.